About 5 years in the past, a no-name studio referred to as Sabotage wowed audiences when it put out The Messenger, a inventive and revolutionary motion platformer that rapidly set itself other than the deluge of comparable retro-flavored titles releasing within the indie house. Empowered by that recreation’s deserved success, the staff then started work on its dream mission, a retro JRPG referred to as Sea of Stars impressed by the likes of Chrono Set off and Secret of Mana. Some doubted the small studio’s skill to ship such a unique expertise from its debut launch, however we’re comfortable to report that any such doubts will be resolutely put to relaxation. Sea of Stars ticks all of the packing containers and executes its imaginative and prescient near-flawlessly, presenting gamers with a enjoyable, participating, and completely wonderful new entry within the JRPG style.
Sea of Stars opens in an historical library, the place a mysterious archivist tells you a narrative that takes place in the identical world as The Messenger, hundreds of years earlier than the occasions of that recreation. An evil god referred to as The Fleshmancer created just a few monstrous Dwellers earlier than disappearing, and every of those creatures might flip right into a World Eater and trigger the apocalypse if allowed to develop to maturity. To oppose this, a robust order of warrior mages referred to as Solstice Warriors was fashioned to exterminate the Dwellers, that are susceptible to magic throughout an eclipse.
Our twin main protagonists, Zale and Valere, enter the story when there is just one Dweller left to destroy, although the Solstice Warriors themselves have dwindled to solely three remaining members. Zale and Valere are thus recruited at a really younger age to hone their respective affinities for solar and moon magic, culminating in a journey to trace down and kill the ultimate monster and put an finish to The Fleshmancer’s depraved plans.
Very like in The Messenger, the plot of Sea of Stars encompasses rather more than what it appears at first, and it’s a real delight to see the way it unfurls and progressively widens its scope. Except for a considerably sluggish begin, Sea of Stars encompasses a thrillingly well-written narrative that manages to stroll a really superb line between seriousness and levity. It general feels darker and extra intense than the overall goofiness of Sabotage’s debut, but there are many welcome moments woven in the place that wry writing fashion reveals itself. Maybe most significantly, Sea of Stars does a stellar job of constructing the connection between the primary social gathering members, particularly Zale and Valere. You’ll really feel fairly hooked up to this crew’s struggles throughout the 30 or so hours that it takes to see their story by and the emotional beats hit arduous when they should.
Sea of Stars follows the standard JRPG template, whereby you discover an expansive world full of secrets and techniques and dungeons, battle foes in turn-based fight, and construct up a progressively increasing social gathering the place everybody fills a novel position in each fight and narrative. The influences of traditional SNES JRPGs are apparent all over the place you look, but Sea of Stars learns from these video games and builds upon their concepts. For instance, the world itself is impressively interactable for a retro RPG. If a ledge or roof seems prefer it might be climbed, it most likely can; you’re not restricted to a strict grid-like motion space that packing containers in your choices.
Exploration feels nearly precisely like what you would possibly count on out of a contemporary entry within the Golden Solar sequence, with all dungeons and locales rife with new environmental puzzles and considerate design that takes issues manner past feeling like in a different way adorned corridors funneling you to the subsequent plot level. Dungeons, the truth is, really feel fairly historically Zelda-like of their layouts, with you normally acquiring some new gadget or magic energy partway by that bestows a brand new traversal possibility and ‘unlocks’ the remainder of the dungeon whereas supplying you with one thing new to make use of within the overworld to seek out extra goodies and unlocks as you backtrack.
Once you encounter enemies, battles happen proper the place you stumble upon them and observe commonplace turn-based guidelines. Each enemy could have a counter above their head that tells you ways lengthy you’ve gotten earlier than they assault once more, and now and again that counter shall be accompanied by a small field with icons. These ‘Locks’ correspond to totally different sorts of components and weapon varieties your characters struggle with, and when you handle to hit an enemy with the best assaults earlier than their counter hits zero, you’ll cancel their assault utterly. Even when you do not hit all of the locks in time, each that you just do handle will lower the enemy’s energy by a set share.
Borrowing from Tremendous Mario RPG, each your offensive and defensive choices may also be bolstered by timed inputs that both enhance your harm or cut back how a lot you are taking from the enemy, and this does quite a bit to make battles extra participating. Needing to study the brand new timings for recent foes or assaults retains you from getting too complacent, and provides a little bit extra of a talent element to battles than merely constructing characters with the best stats and letting the numbers play out—you really should get higher at preventing a boss when you hold shedding.
Moreover, there’s a lift system right here vaguely harking back to Octopath Traveler. Hitting enemies with commonplace assaults won’t solely generate some MP so that you can use to unleash extra highly effective combos, however it’ll additionally ship a flurry of magic orbs throughout the sector, ready for use. If you wish to juice up the harm of an assault or social gathering buff, you possibly can then have a personality take up the orbs as much as thrice per motion to energy up.
Battles are thus much more concerned than merely choosing actions from a menu, and this dynamism makes each encounter really feel significant. In a uncommon change from typical RPG design, even the low-level trash mobs you encounter whereas exploring hit arduous and might comfortably knock out characters in two or three hits, even if you’re correctly geared and leveled. Because of this all of the supplementary programs like assault boosting and enter timing really matter past simply boss fights, which ensures that fight encounters by no means really feel like senseless padding.
In a quite forward-thinking transfer, characters will not be leveled independently of one another. As an alternative, the entire social gathering positive factors expertise and ranges up as one unit, with every character (even those that aren’t in lively use) getting a commensurate stat bump if you stage up. You continue to have some management over particular person progress, as you possibly can decide a stat for every character that you really want additional factors to go to after they stage up, however we appreciated how this choice eliminates the ‘bench’ that the majority RPGs have. Each character in your social gathering, even those that newly be part of, is battle-ready and equal to the others. And when you can solely have three characters in play throughout a battle, any of them can tag out and get replaced by a celebration member on the sidelines with out costing a flip. This encourages you to make use of the entire social gathering on a regular basis, quite than a choose few that you just construct whereas ignoring the others.
Many nice JRPGs have some game-length minigame that you could have interaction in, and Sea of Stars options this within the enjoyable ‘Wheels’ recreation performed with patrons in taverns you go to. Wheels is mainly a dice-roller the place the objective is to erase the opponent’s HP earlier than they get you first. You start every match by choosing two characters, equivalent to a mage and a knight, which is able to forged their motion as soon as they’re given sufficient power, which is generated out of your rolls. You get three rolls per flip, with every of the 5 wheels producing a logo that corresponds to one in every of your characters or to a wall you possibly can construct to dam harm.
The technique of Wheels comes into play in how one can individually lock in wheels that you just wish to hold. If, say, you need your knight to assault this flip, it will be favorable to lock in any symbols you get that correspond to it. However, in case your first roll generates a number of symbols to your mage as a substitute, you must think about when you’d quite lock in that unexpectedly favorable end result, hold solely a few of the wheels, or toss all of it and check out once more within the hopes that you just get the same roll to your knight. Successful a recreation of Wheels is thus equal elements talent and luck, as you’re finally hedging your bets and attempting to preempt your opponent’s choices.
Although it’s completely elective, Wheels isn’t just a few throwaway facet mode—there’s a completely separate development system centered round it the place you problem progressively stronger opponents as you discover and obtain new character varieties out of your victories that broaden your potential tactical choices for future video games. We cherished the inclusion of Wheels in Sea of Stars, because it’s separate from the remainder of the gameplay loop with out feeling needlessly distracting or compulsory, whereas providing a pleasant break from the motion.
Sea of Stars is the form of recreation that repeatedly finds methods to one-up itself, all the time pulling new tips out of the bag simply if you really feel you would possibly lastly have seen all its concepts. Very like in The Messenger, there’s a second about midway by the sport that recontextualizes the whole lot that got here earlier than it and completely revitalizes the journey by including one other layer to issues. That is the furthest factor from a launch that settles into complacent repetition, and it’s a real delight to see how tugging on some unfastened strings causes the entire recreation to open up in surprising methods.
For its visuals, Sea of Stars employs a mode that we’d say exceeds Sq. Enix’s famed HD-2D system in holding the spirit of traditional pixel artwork alive whereas bolstering it with fashionable touches. The spritework is impressively detailed and options an insane quantity of selection for the animation, giving all motion a staggering smoothness for a pixel artwork title. Environments are equally wealthy with element and every is visually distinct from the final, with the dungeons usually proving to be the highlights of the entire expertise. That is all tied collectively by a contemporary dynamic lighting system that provides Sea of Stars a surprisingly ‘actual’ look in lots of locations, considerably elevating the environment of most environments.
As for the audio, Eric Brown—identified by his stage identify of Rainbowdragoneyes—returns after his stellar work on The Messenger’s soundtrack and we’re happy to report that he hasn’t misplaced his edge. There is a totally different tone right here and Sea of Stars’ music is decidedly much less catchy to match, however what it loses in power it makes up for in setting efficient environment. Not solely that, however the staff at Sabotage managed to get Yasunori Mitsuda—the composer for Chrono Set off—to write down a number of tracks; his affect is abundantly evident in Brown’s work and their kinds circulate collectively flawlessly.
The one criticism that we are able to fairly make about Sea of Stars is that it feels a bit awkwardly paced at occasions. It’s an exciting trip from begin to end and is completely value seeing by, however there have been just a few occasions if you’re compelled to run errands that distract an excessive amount of from the central story. There’s one second the place you arrive at a significant plot level, solely to be despatched away by a personality to do one thing to show your self to them. You go on that tangent and are available again, and also you’re despatched away once more on one other tangent to fetch an merchandise for them from a dungeon. The fight and stage design is great, so these tangents hardly really feel like a bore, however we generally discovered ourselves wishing that there was a little bit extra focus relating to story execution.